Meta has just joined the list of organizations considered terrorist and extremist by the Russian government. This decision follows several pressure movements from the country towards the American giant, which have multiplied since the declaration of war against Ukraine. The Putin administration certainly hopes in this way to contain the leak of information from its territory on social networks.
Russia continues to isolate itself from the rest of the world. Since the start of the Ukrainian conflict, the Putin administration has been waging a second war in parallel, directed against the American tech giants. Google has since been forced to file for bankruptcy in the country, while Wikipedia faces censorship threats. The objective is all in all quite clear: Russia wants to control the information circulating around its martial policy.
While huge population movements have shaken the territory since the announcement of the partial mobilization of the inhabitants, Russia today wants to be even more severe towards Meta. Mark Zuckerberg’s group was already in the sights of the government, which the latter accused in particular of making propaganda for the LGBT communities. Today, the company has joined a list that is ambiguous to say the least: that of extremist terrorists.
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Russia definitely wants to get rid of Facebook and Instagram
This is indeed what AFP tells us, which was able to consult a database of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service, which therefore identifies organizations deemed dangerous to the security of the country. Last March, Facebook had already had to deal with the Russian authorities, who then rendered their verdict by designating the social network as a terrorist.
It would therefore seem that the thing is now official, and that Meta and its social networks will be permanently banned from Russian territory. It is still difficult to predict the impact this will have on the company’s activities. The same goes for the propaganda activities of the Kremlin, which actively uses Facebook to spread fake news across the web.